At the breakfast table of a friend not long ago I heard the gentleman of the house remark over his fragrant coffee:

“I laughed at my wife when she went into the cooking school last summer, I thought her a model cook before; but for some reason she has improved. I never tasted such coffee as this.”

My hostess answered: “The reason is simple enough. I had always cooked by rule before. I learned in my studies in cookery to reason. It makes a great difference.”

It does make a difference, and never a greater than in preparing tea, coffee and chocolate. There is rarely a cup of any one of these beverages on our tables which is fit to drink; our coffee is bitter and muddy, tea is either insipid or too strong, and chocolate has failed to become the popular drink which it deserves to be, because so rarely well prepared.

Few cooks understand the nature of either the coffee berry or the tea leaf, and consequently do not know how to treat them in order to extract their delicious flavor, aroma, and nerve-bracing qualities.

Few cooks have an idea of the extreme delicacy of these articles, of how scientifically, even artistically, they must be treated. To extract an oil or flavor is one of the nicest experiments of the laboratory, and one for which a chemist selects his materials with the greatest care, attends strictly to the cleanliness of his vessels, watches every change in temperature, and counts even seconds in time. Making these beverages is nothing less than performing a delicate chemical experiment, and yet we are so ignorant or careless about this important work that we attend strictly to neither heat nor time, and often take just what we can most easily get to work with.

If you would have good tea, coffee and chocolate begin your care with your buying. Tea is a most troublesome article to purchase. There are so many varieties on the market, and so much adulteration that the probability is that unless you are taking extreme precautions you are getting an inferior article. Adulteration is astonishingly common, poor teas being manipulated to make them appear like the first-class grades; inferior black teas colored to look like high-priced green teas, “lie tea” sold in vast quantities, and made-over teas[1] made to pass for fresh. How to obtain the genuine article is the housewife’s first problem. Careful examination may be made under the microscope for coloring matter, the tea may be soaked to see if it unrolls into true leaves, or after washing it in a little water the liquid may be tested with chemicals for foreign substances. But all this means trouble that few housewives care to take. Probably the most practical plan is to find by careful experiment a thoroughly reliable[2] tea-house and then confine your patronage to it. A pound of tea bought here and another there, as convenience may dictate or some friend advise, will insure you nothing but adulteration. The only safe plan is to find a house which sells good tea. Your tea bought, it must be prepared. In making a cup of tea the chemical composition and the effect of each step in its preparation must be observed or your draught will be ruined. The constituents in the leaf which you must look after are the theine, the aromatic oil, and the tannin. Your tea must be treated in such a way that the first two, which give to the drink its flavor and aroma, will be extracted, but that the bitter tannin will be left undeveloped. The theine and oil are both volatile substances, so that if your tea is steeped too long, or if it is boiled, they will literally fly away, while the tannin extracted will turn your cup into a bitter, herby drink. A rule is easily formulated from this bit of science:

Into a perfectly clean tea-pot, just scalded with boiling hot water, put a heaping tablespoonful of tea for each person, and upon it pour a cup and a half of boiling water for each spoonful. Cover your pot with a “cosy”[3] if you have one, and let it stand on the back of the range, where it will not boil, for from five to ten minutes. The length of time required to steep each variety of tea must be determined by experiment, some varieties taking longer than others. The exact length each housewife must determine when she tries a new kind; and it may be said of the exact proportion of tea to water that it as well must be determined by experiment. No rule in cooking is inflexible. It must always be modified by the good sense and the scientific care of the cook.

The English custom of making tea on the table is the prettiest and the most satisfactory. They pour upon the tea required a small quantity of boiling water, this is placed upon the table, covered with the “cosy;” a pot of water taken when boiling from the stove is kept hot by a spirit lamp, and when the tea is steeped as much boiling water as the quantity of tea used demands is poured into the tea-pot. It is allowed to stand about three minutes and then poured into the cups and on the cream. Remember, cream should always be poured into the cups first for both tea and coffee, and tea is as much improved by cream as is coffee.

The purchase of coffee is beset with the same trouble as that of tea—adulteration. You may get a manufactured berry, you may get chiccory; to avoid this careful tests must be applied and only reliable firms patronized. Nothing but unbrowned coffee should be bought; the roasting should be done at home. This process requires particular care. The coffee berry is hard and horny, water has no effect upon it even when it has been ground. It must be roasted in order that certain constituents may become soluble. These constituents are a fragrant volatile oil called caffeone, and the caffeine, which is identical with the theine of tea. By roasting the oil is distributed through the berry and so made soluble, while the caffeine is developed so that it may be absorbed by water. Just the right amount of roasting must be done or the essential constituents will be expelled and the bitter qualities will be made to predominate. I have said that the roasting should be done at home. It may be done in the shops, of course, but the operation there is carried on so unscientifically that the aroma is lost on the town instead of being shut up in the berry. Only a few days ago, passing up a business street of a city, I was astonished to find the air heavy with the delicious aroma of coffee. It scented the air for a square, and only when I came to a large grocery store was the mystery explained. The grocer was browning his coffee, and its odor was serving for an advertisement, effective, perhaps, among the ignorant, but which would warn every wise housewife not to purchase roasted coffee. The process is best carried on in one of the very nearly perfect coffee roasters to be found in the shops; if these are not at hand an ordinary dripping pan may be used. It should be covered to prevent loss of aroma, and should be continually shaken to prevent burning. The entire attention of one person should be given the coffee during this operation. When turned to a rich chestnut brown remove, keeping covered until quite cool. If left open the aroma escapes very rapidly from warm coffee, but if kept covered much of that made volatile by the heat is re-absorbed. A tight dish—an air-tight canister is best—must be ready to keep it in.

When using, grind only what you need, and take care that it is not left coarse, when the strength can not be extracted, or that it is not too fine, when the liquor will be muddy in spite of you; in this, as always, experiment until you know the degree of fineness which ground coffee should have. A heaping tablespoonful of ground coffee to a cup and a half of water is the ordinary proportion for making strong coffee—the only kind which should ever be prepared, by the way, the diluting ought always to take place in the cup; to the required amount of coffee add the white and shell of an egg and cold water to thoroughly wet the whole; stir up these ingredients in your coffee pot and pour upon them the required amount of boiling hot water. Let it boil from ten to fifteen minutes, pour in half a cup of cold water and remove to the side of the stove where it can not boil. Do not boil longer than the exact time which you have found necessary for the kind of coffee you are using, if you do you lose your flavor and extract in its place a bitter principle which is ruinous. Remember always what one of our famous cooks says: “There comes a time in baking, frying or broiling when injured nature revolts and burns up, but a thing may boil until not a vestige of its original condition remains, and unless the water evaporates, it may go on boiling for hours without reminding one by smell or smoke that it is spoiled.”

Your coffee will settle in about five minutes. Now if you must use a different coffee urn, gently pour off the liquor so as not to disturb the grounds. The settling of coffee is an essential point. The regulation method of stirring an egg into the freshly ground berry is undoubtedly best, but another and more economical practice may take its place. After your freshly roasted berries are cool enough to be easily handled, add to each pound a fresh egg and stir it in until each kernel is coated smoothly with the mixture. Care must be taken that the coffee be not warm enough to cook the egg. When eggs are expensive an economical method is to wash the shells before they are broken, and use with cold water to settle the coffee.

After all these precautions there are still other points to guard. Not the least is the condition of the inside of the coffee pot; it should never be stained, burnt or coated, but kept perfectly bright by being washed, and, if necessary, scoured after each meal. It would be a gain in aroma if your coffee pot could always be kept perfectly tight so that none could escape, and if it could go to the table in the same dish. The pleasant, suggestive odors which precede a meal are always signs that the most delicious flavors of your coming breakfast, dinner or tea are escaping, that through the unskillfulness of your cook you are losing what should give the greatest charm to your meal.

CafÉ au lait[4] is an excellent drink and easily prepared. Make in the usual way a pint of strong coffee, and into your table urn or a pitcher pour a cup and a half of fresh milk, scalding hot; to this add the coffee and let the whole stand for five minutes in a hot place, or in a kettle of hot water.

Chocolate is a most delicious drink if properly prepared; it is, however, so often raw, muddy and strong that we have not been able to educate ourselves to its peculiar disagreeableness. Make it by the following rule and you will find it both nutritious and pleasant: Select with care the best make of chocolate, and into a little cold water rub smooth five tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate; be sure that it be rubbed in smoothly, a hard particle of chocolate is as unwelcome a visitor in your cup as floating tea leaves or black bobbing bits of coffee berries. So rub it smooth and stir it slowly into five cups of boiling water. Let it boil for about five minutes, and in the meantime heat two cups of milk; this must be stirred into the boiling chocolate and the whole allowed to simmer for a few minutes longer. You may sweeten it on the fire or in the cup.